Monday, March 1, 2010

It’s difficult to understand a subject when those explaining it are motivated not by truth, but profit. In the case of health care, both Democrats and Republicans have huge financial incentives to obscure, mislead, or lie. Instead of common sense and honesty directing the debate, bags of money facilitate the conversation, funneled in from the health care industry via lobbyists into Congressmen’s pockets. This is the real reason that Obama’s “health care summit” was full of free-market jargon, staged debate and fake rage.

The majority of working people in this country are completely alienated from this nonsense, and are growing progressively hostile to the lies of both parties and their respective media mouthpieces. Polls continue to show rising opposition to the Democrats’ health care shenanigans, while showing no upgrade in status for the Republicans.

The ability for millions of people to see through the muddle in Washington points to a larger distrust of the two-party system. Even as “progressive Democrats” and other liberal pundits bow before the health care industry by urging passage of “an imperfect” health care bill, workers, the poor and the elderly aren’t taking the bait.

And why should they? The Democrats want millions of uninsured people to be mandated into buying crappy health insurance from the most hated companies in existence, where co-pays, premiums and other fees will prevent millions from benefiting from their new, shoddy health care. This individual mandate is reason enough to solidly reject Obama’s health care scheme, but it’s just the beginning.

The Democrats don’t like to talk about how their health care vision slashes Medicare. The New York Times explains in detail how Obama’s new plan attacks Medicare; here are some examples:

“President Obama’s budget would make a down payment toward his goal of covering the uninsured, and he would pay for it in part by cutting federal payments [Medicare] to hospitals, insurance companies and drug companies.”

Later, the article reads: “Mr. Obama said he would save $176 billion over 10 years by cutting Medicare payments to health insurance companies that provide comprehensive care to more than 10 million of the 44 million Medicare beneficiaries.”

And: “Mr. Obama also proposed squeezing $37 billion out of the [Medicare] payments to home health agencies over the next decade.” (February 26, 2010).

The article fails to connect these blandly stated numbers with the gigantic human suffering that will result. All that seems to matter is that the “uninsured will be [poorly] insured,” not that those currently receiving quality services will have their health care stripped from them.

Equally disastrous is the bi-partisan consensus over health care rationing. The Democrats plan aims to save billions of dollars by simply providing less health care. In fact, rationing health care is the philosophical backbone of the Democrats’ plan, which amounts to boosting the profits of health care corporations by allowing them to provide less service.

In Obama’s recently released plan, a large section is entitled “policies to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.” The mainstream media and both political parties have made it abundantly clear that “waste” means “excessive tests and procedures that doctors routinely perform.” In essence, this means that the “new normal” for health care will be less tests and less procedures for those mandated to pay for corporate health care. Of course these measures will continue to be performed for those who can afford more expensive plans.

Contrary to the foolish accusations of the Republicans, the Democrats health care bill does not represent “the government takeover of health care,” but the corporate takeover. The fact that this corporate coup is being conducted through the hands of government only proves that both political parties are wholly owned by the corporations.

Federally run Medicare and state run Medicaid are being slashed, pushing soon-to-be mandated people into the corporate sphere, where services will be cut to push up profits.

Another way that the corporate takeover of health care will be achieved is through the tax on so called “Cadillac health care plans.” Employers will be taxed for offering their workers quality health care after a certain threshold; the worse the health care offered, the lower the tax. Labor unions correctly interpreted the tax to be an attack on their health care plans, since union workers typically have better health care plans than the unorganized.

Sadly, many labor leaders agreed not to fight this tax after Obama “compromised” by raising the tax threshold and delaying its implementation until 2018. But to think that such a tax can be ignored until 2018 is a perilous delusion. Employers will use every contract negotiation until 2018 to attack health care plans, so that the plans are below the threshold by the time the tax kicks in. Those employers without a unionized workforce will simply drop their health care plans and force their workers into the treacherous waters of Obama’s health care mandate.

Both political parties love this idea. And despite the Republicans furious playacting, they are giddy that the Democrats have adopted long held conservative Republican beliefs about health care. This is what the Wall Street Journal said about the health care summit:

“To listen to President Obama and his closest Democratic allies, you'd think John McCain had won the election and their bill had been drafted by Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn and the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute [a rightwing think tank].” (February 26, 2010).

The above-described dynamics will drastically alter the health care landscape in the U.S. The high standards of health care embodied in Medicare and union plans are being undermined, setting a much lower standard nationally. Once these plans are killed, the corporate vultures will swoop in with their “individual mandate” to make billions of dollars, while the threshold for “quality care” will be lowered drastically with the mass rationing of health care.

Anyone interested in saving health care must fight the Democrats’ plans, while demanding that Medicare be extended to everyone. To ensure that Medicare is financially sound, taxes on the wealthy and corporations must be raised, while the health care monopoly corporations should be nationalized and run as public utilities.

These ideas can be made a reality only through the united and organized effort of the Labor Movement, retiree organizations, community groups and anyone else interested in saving and extending real health care in the U.S.

Sotto voce, within the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. and around the country, political insiders, including top Democratic Party officials, are voicing the same conclusion: Barack Obama is a disaster, and if nothing is done, the United States is not going to survive. Some, among the muted chorus, are openly talking of the need for the President to be removed from office--by impeachment or resignation. Others fear the ``i'' word, but offer no comforting alternative to President Obama's speedy removal from office.

The first open fissures within the Obama White House team, itself, have now grabbed headlines, beginning with a Daily Beast online column two weeks ago by Leslie Gelb, the former President of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, longtime New York Times senior correspondent, and Carter Administration State Department policy director. Clearly speaking for the Democratic Party wing of the Eastern Liberal Establishment, Gelb demanded the immediate ouster of Rahm Emanuel, and the entire Chicago sycophant crew occupying the remaining West Wing offices.

Gelb's column was countered, a week later, by the Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who jumped to Emanuel's defense, while roasting Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and, by implication, First Lady Michelle Obama. By Milbank's account, Emanuel's ruthless competence has been underminded, at every turn, by the Chicago incompetents, who treat President Obama like a cult god--a most dangerous relationship to cultivate with a man with a Narcissistic Complex to rival Emperor Nero. Emanuel would sell his soul to the Devil with no compunctions. But he demands Devilish competence.

There is good reason to believe that the Milbank account is accurate, and that Rahm Emanuel is not about to throw his reputation down the nearest toilet bowl, to remain in competition with the likes of Jarrett and Axelrod. Things are about to get very nasty in Obamaland, and none too soon.

The reality is that the American people have already delivered a devastating vote of no-confidence to President Obama at every opportunity, since the August recess town hall meeting explosions. This past week, students a the University of California at Berkley rioted over cuts of $2.5 billion in the bankrupt state's higher education budget. Young Americans, who delivered the 2008 election to Obama, have defected in droves, and are facing a no-future prospect with anger, that is now boiling over into rage. If you thought that the Spring 1968 Boomer generation campus explosions were serious business, wait to see what erupts this month--as students are hit with massive cutbacks, cancelled credit lines, and real unemployment and underemployment figures between 20-30 percent.

One very senior Democratic Party official openly declares that Obama has done more to destroy the United States in one year than Bush and Cheney were able to do in eight. Can there be a more stinging indictment?

So far, the pandemonium in the corridors of power is taking place in cloak rooms, and private watering holes, in whispered tones. Out on the street the same sentiments are being voiced - with pungency and force.

About Me

Checkhov on the relationship bet. the 'student' and the state :
"..the outcry for lack of coverage in the papers indicate that public sentiment is on the side of the students. It's impossibile to pass judgment when not all facts are covered. The state forbids you to write, it forbids the truth. This is arbitrary rule yet the papers still write about rights and prerogatives of the state in connection to this same rule. The mind simply cant make sense of all this. If it aggresses against us, shouldn't we protest ?
The concept of state ought to be founded on precise legal rights.
If it is not, the state is only a bogeyman, a hollow noise producing imaginary fright"